Moving Image Theory: Ecological Considerations

Book DescriptionBlending conventional film theory with traditional psychology to provide a radically different set of critical methods and propositions about cinema, Moving Image Theory: Ecological Considerations looks at film through its communication properties rather than its aesthetic ones. Drawing on the tenets of James J. Gibson?s ecological theory of visual perception, the fifteen essays and forty-three illustrations gathered here by editors Joseph D. Anderson and Barbara Fisher Andersonoffer a new understanding of how moving images are seen and understood, emphasizing cinema?s ability to convincingly portray reality. Film studies have chiefly focused on critical interpretation of symbolic and aesthetic expressions, but these traditional approaches to film studies can be complex, confusing, and elaborate, often with no moorings in reality. Hinging on a simplified perception of the world and cinema in an attempt to move film theory closer to reality, Moving...